With Macbeth, Welle's desire to subordinate the performances to the
production's overall concept was actually helpful, since his cast contained only
four professional actors. The Federal Theater Project, it should be remembered,
was a relief organization whose primary mission was to put people to work;
Hallie Flanagan's stated goal was to spend 90 percent of the FTP budget on salaries. Although she also decreed that only those who
had previously made their living in the theater could be hired, in practice this
conflicted with the bureaucratic requirement that 90 percent of the employees be
taken from the relief rolls. Of the 750 people in the Negro Unit, most had done
only occasional work as extras or chorus dancers; barely 150 were real
professionals, and they included elocutionists and African drummers as well as
experienced actors.

Watercolor costume sketches. Federal Theatre Project Collection.

At least the African drummers - a Sierra Leonean group headed by a genuine
witch doctor - could be put to good use in Macbeth. For his murderous
thane, Welles chose Jack Carter, who had made a sensation as Crown in Porgy
but was also known as difficult and dangerous drunk. Balancing him as Lady
Macbeth was Edna Thomas, a seasoned pro from the Lafayette Players who had also
worked on Broadway. She had performed only one minor Shakespearean role, Carter
none, but the actor cast as Hecate - Eric Burroughs, a graduate of London's
Royal Academy of Dramatic Art - presumably had some background in speaking verse.
Canada Lee as a cigarette - smoking Banquo completed the production's
professional acting roster.

Rehearsals began with a good deal of tension in the air. The Harlem
community was not at all sure what it thought of "Shakespeare in blackface"
directed by a white man. Some African-Americans feared the production would
make their race look ridiculous. One local zealot, convinced that Macbeth's
director was deliberately creating a travesty to humiliate blacks, attacked
Welles with a razor in the Lafayette Theater lobby, apparently without hurting
him. Within the FTP, a memo complained that Macbeth was consuming a
disproportionate percentage of the Negro Unit's budget and staff time - a
comment that seemed borne out by the elaborate costumes and vivid sets taking
shape in Nat Karson's designs. (In fact the scenic budget was a mere $2,000,
low even in the '30s, though generous by the standards of the FTP.)

The director responded to these pressures by creating a sense of community
among his actors. He brought food and drink to rehearsals, paid for out of his
earnings from radio work. That work kept him busy in the evenings, so the
company assembled after midnight and rehearsed in nocturnal isolation, which
also helped draw them together. Welles knew he had to establish his authority
with a cast that quite possibly harbored doubts about his ability and
intentions. He quickly won over Edna Thomas, respected by the others for her
professionalism and dignity, by treating her with delicate consideration and
respect. With the turbulent Jack Carter, he created a camaraderie of
hell-raising, joining the actor after rehearsals ended at dawn to prowl through
Harlem's nightspots.

Rehearsals were often chaotic; a friend of Nat Karson's attended one and found "absolute pandemonium, with Welles barking
orders over the amplification system." The director was volatile and
caustic: "Jesus Christ, Jack - learn your lines!" and "What the
hell happened to the Virgil Thomson sound effects between acts?" were among
the exasperated comments found in his notes. Hallie Flanagan recalled later that
"our Negro company ... were always ... threatening to murder Orson in spite
of their admiration for him." But they were confident that the director's
outbursts weren't racially motivated; he reserved his most venomous criticisms
for the white lighting designer, Abe Feder. Welles knew how to get results from
people, Houseman observed: "He had a shrewd instinctive sense of when to
bully or charm, when to be kind or savage - and he was seldom mistaken."

As the production took shape during technical run-throughs, it became clear
that Welles had fashioned a dynamic, dazzlingly theatrical version of Macbeth
that both compensated for his performers' weaknesses and took advantage of
their strengths. The actors spoke Shakespeare's verse in a simple, unstudied
manner perfectly suited to the production's ferociously direct style. Their
untrained voices were supported and given added impressiveness during the most
important speeches by Welles's use of drums, percussion and sound effects as
underscoring.

The witches' scenes were truly menacing, with the costumes, jungle backdrops
and authentic voodoo drumming and chants creating a convincingly supernatural
atmosphere. Garry Wills argues in Witches and Jesuits, his provocative
book on Macbeth, that most psychologically oriented modern productions
have failed to provide the coherent spiritual framework essential to making
Macbeth's downfall understandable; Welles seemed instinctively to grasp that
voodoo would substitute nicely for the Elizabethans' belief in witches as
servants of the devil. The total effect was of a violent universe ruled by
evil. Rewritten by Welles, the ending no longer suggested reconciliation and
rebirth; instead, Malcolm seemed likely to be the witches' next victim. Though
Welle's interpretation was not overtly political, this nightmare vision had
obvious resonance in a world menaced by fascism and the threat of world war.